In a recent Workers’ Party outreach, Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh met a Singaporean who used to work for Mr Shashi Tharoor, a top Indian diplomat and writer who has served as an MP in his country for over a decade after a stint as a high official in the United Nations.
The WP chief wrote in a Sept 6 (Tuesday) Facebook post that at the party’s most recent Hammer outreach, a weekend activity wherein its newsletter is distributed, he met a man named Wallace, who said that Mr Tharoor is “a very good boss and a good man.”
Mr Tharoor had served as United Nations Undersecretary General for Communications and Public Information from 2002 to 2007 and had even been up for the position of UN Secretary-General in 2006.
The fact that Mr Wallace had worked with Mr Tharoor piqued Mr Singh’s interest.
“A Singaporean working for a very well-regarded former UN official who is a current Member of Parliament in India?” he wrote.
During the course of their conversation, Mr Wallace told Mr Singh that after completing his National Service in 1980, he joined the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR.
“Many younger Singaporeans don’t know this, but Singapore processed more than 30,000 refugees from Vietnam from 1978 to 1996,” Mr Singh added.
Mr Wallace apparently told him that the refugees resettled in other countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, and other western countries, save for a small number who went back to Vietnam.
The LO commented that “It sounded like quite an operation!
Wallace shared one part of it when he recalled picking up foreign translators from Equatorial Hotel in town and driving them to Hawkins Camp in Sembawang where the translators would instruct the refugees in the national language of whatever country they were going to be resettled in like Italy, France, West Germany etc.”
Mr Singh then went on to say that he had enjoyed his conversation with Mr Wallace.
“There are just so many stories that reside in the memories of our people and the experiences they saw. One can only imagine the stories those Vietnamese refugees had to tell. As for Wallace, he clearly remembers all his bosses very well!”
He then went on to ask if there are others among his Facebook followers who have similar stories to share about the experiences of refugees in Singapore or those, who, like Mr Wallace, worked with the UNHCR.
Mr Singh also added a link to “Heaven on Earth,” a South China Morning Post article from last year about Singapore’s Vietnamese refugee camp. /TISG
Concerned residents talk to Pritam Singh about rising prices of HDB resale flats